


I thought I heard you call my name

by stars_inthe_sky



Category: Chess - Rice/Ulvaeus/Andersson
Genre: Chess, F/M, First Meetings, Gen, Musical References, Post-Canon, Pre-Canon, Pre-Relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-15
Updated: 2017-12-15
Packaged: 2019-02-15 06:36:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,675
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13025328
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stars_inthe_sky/pseuds/stars_inthe_sky
Summary: On taking a stranger’s advice and letting a friend fool you twice.Or, two scenes: one idyllic and well-produced; the other less so.





	I thought I heard you call my name

**Author's Note:**

  * For [SegaBarrett](https://archiveofourown.org/users/SegaBarrett/gifts).



> O light the heart that lingers in Yuletide! Highly recommended is this sweet, enchanted place.

Freddie has been playing against any and all takers in Washington Square Park for four hours, twenty-five minutes, and twelve seconds, give or take, depending on how you tally all the interminable waits in between matches. The autumn sun hints at setting, its rays glinting off of the checkered tables and tourists’ sunglasses, and he’s just about done with the parade of rank—or unranked, really—amateurs.

Then someone lands in the seat opposite his, briefly blocking the dimming light as she settles into place. He avoids paying her any attention for the half-second it takes her to slap a five-dollar bill on the board and move a pawn forward.

Freddie sighs mightily but snatches the bill, not caring if he offends his new opponent. “Last match of the day,” he declares to anyone who might be listening, although the crowd that had knitted around him earlier has mostly dispersed.

The woman seems as uninterested in him as he is in her, and that gives him pause. Or it would, if he were interested in anything but the play of the pieces in front of them. The truth of her becomes clear within a few moves, though—he is, for once, playing someone who actually knows their way through a proper match.

He takes her rook; she traps his bishop and knocks over a knight. He corners her queen, and she takes his. She puts him in check twice before he maneuvers her into a draw. Barely. By now, he’s sitting up, alight.

Freddie is impressed in spite of himself; he can’t even blame the setting or his mood for the lack of a conclusive victory. She’s _good_ , better than any amateur ought to be, and as he leans back in his chair, arms crossed in front of his chest, he watches her study the board with intent. He knows the look in her eyes and can almost see the gears in her head turning, replaying their dance, confirming what she already knows, learning from what she hadn’t.

Whoever she is, she has his attention, and he says as much.

She waits another breath before looking up from the board, sitting up and leaning back to mirror his position. “Florence Vassy,” she replies without preamble. “Lombardy at the Chess Shop said you needed a second.”

Freddie raises an eyebrow. “I’m not looking to hire anyone, lady. Bill’s getting old.”

“He didn’t say you were looking,” Florence retorts, meeting his gaze. There’s a lilt to her accent he can’t identify—not quite British, but something European, probably. “He said you _needed_ a number two.”

“And you think that’s you?”

“I think I’ve studied your current game enough to almost beat you at it. Give me another minute and I’ll tell you how Viigand would’ve done it.”

He gestures to the board with less skepticism than he means to, and Florence rights her king, shifting the pieces back a handful of moves. Moving his pieces exactly as he had and would, she replays the end of the game but this time nudges him into check, then mate. She taps his king over with a damn pawn and looks back to him, self-satisfied rather than expectant.

“Huh.” He peers at the worn plastic figures for a few seconds. He doesn’t know Viigand’s game that well, but he knows his own—and, clearly, so does she. That’s new.

“What I need is an assistant.” He waits for a reaction, but not a muscle in her face twitches. “Someone to manage my schedule, travel, interviews, that kind of thing. If you can manage that, you’re hardier than the last half a dozen girls that Bill’s sent my way, but you’re welcome to put yourself down however you want in the paperwork.” He’s had as many male employees as female ones, and none of them had half of this woman’s aptitude, but he doesn’t want her thinking she’s special.

“You need me,” she points out. “Whether you like it or not.”

“I’ll be a Grandmaster in five years,” he retorts. “Less, if Bezukhov drops off the circuit like they’re saying.”

“I can make it three.” Florence’s confidence in herself—and him—is unnerving, and her tone is all challenge, no pleading. “Less, if you catch Bezukhov before Hastings so I can see how you play off each other. Hire me for _that_ , and I’ll handle the fucking press for you.”

“Deal,” he says, and they shake on it. Her hand is smooth and warm against the cooling air, and he finds himself a little reluctant to let it go, though he does. “Where’d you learn to play?”

She shrugs as he sweeps his pieces into the drawstring bag they’d come with. For the first time since she’d arrived, Florence stares down at the ground, biting her lip. Finally, she says, “My father taught me when I was little. I never wanted to play any other game.”

Freddie knows the latter experience; the former, though, sounds wholly alien. “He must be proud.”

“He’s dead,” she says flatly. “But I like to think so. When do we start?”

“Meet me at the shop in half an hour with coffee and everything you know about Viigand’s strategy.” He’s facing good old Leonid in a few weeks in Manila, after all.

Freddie holds out the five-dollar bill. Florence snatches it, all semblance of uncertainty gone as she spins on her heel and marches toward the Village Chess Shop. Her heels click on the sidewalk like a metronome, and it’s the first moment in a long, long time that he’s cared about someone walking away.

* * *

Cross his heart, Freddie had not meant to find Florence at all, let alone in the sad little first-class lounge at what passes for an airport in Bangkok. But there she is, nestled in a plastic chair with her knees tucked under her chin, staring out the window at a clutch of jetliners milling around the tarmac. There’s no one around her, no reporters or agents or spies, and her face is hardened despite that, though her eyes are rimmed in red.

Before he can react to her presence, Florence turns her head and locks eyes with him, as if someone had whispered in her ear that he was standing a few yards away. Her eyes are steady on him as she uncurls her body, shifting her feet to the floor and crossing her arms, and she watches him until he makes his way over and sits. He leaves a chair empty in the row between them and lets her be the one to speak first.

Instead, she returns to facing the windows and ignoring him. Freddie waits a full minute—he counts—before he says, “Your father?”

Florence purses her lips, glaring at him from the corner of her eye. “Still dead. They were just playing a different game with us.”

He doesn’t ask about the Russian; Freddie had felt downright swell about the other man’s losses earlier in the day, but the bitterness in Florence’s voice drains any sense of triumph he had felt. There had been plenty of victories with her by his side, and he had won one this without her—in spite of her, even. But suddenly it seems like nothing worth bragging about.

Freddie thinks of about fifteen different things to say to her, all biting and mean and cutting and cruel, but instead, all that comes out of his mouth is, “I’m sorry.”

This time, she turns to face him. “Oh my god, you’re actually serious.”

“Walter said—well, I guess it doesn’t matter. But I didn’t know, I swear.”

“Did Anatoly…” She trails off, then starts again. “Do you think you were right about him?”

He blinks, surprised by the question, and it takes him a moment to realize what she means. “That he wouldn’t throw the match?”

“Yeah.”

“I…I don’t know,” he admits, and he continues before he can think through a better answer. “It—it’s pretty hard to lose at chess on purpose without _looking_ like it.”

“I’m aware of how the game works,” she snaps. “And I know his game. And yours. Obviously. But you’re the one who sat across the board from him, and I’m asking _you_ whether or not he let you win.”

There’s no good answer, he realizes; either Freddie had won outright, and the Commie asshole hadn’t loved her enough to make the sacrifice play, or Sergievsky had martyred himself for nothing.

“Honestly…” he says, and while he knows she knows that he is many unflattering things, a liar isn’t one of them. “Honestly, I don’t know. But I know how distracting _you_ are, even if he wouldn’t admit that. I wouldn’t have, a year ago.”

“Would you have thrown it?”

“No. But you saw what happened in Merano anyway.”

Florence sucks in a sharp breath, her expression still unchanged. Her eyes look a little softer than they had. “Did you mean the—the other thing you said?”

“Yeah. Still do. But you knew that already. You had me from the first gambit back in the Village.”

Instead of replying, she rises abruptly and walks to the front desk. When she returns, she’s holding a fresh ticket and, at his questioning look, explains, “I’ll get my things from London another time.” He gives the paper a closer look; she’s now booked on his flight back to New York.

It would be nice to think he really has changed, or that her feelings have simply boomeranged back to him so quickly. He doubts either of those things is true, easy as they would be to believe. “Okay,” he says. “The apartment hasn’t changed or anything. Well, maybe it’s dirtier. Florence—”

She stuffs her ticket into a pocket and shakes her head. Freddie falls silent as she drops into the seat beside him and, after half a second, tilts her head to rest on his shoulder.

He holds very still, until they’re breathing in quiet unison, watching planes glide soundlessly down runways, lifting off into parts unknown.

**Author's Note:**

> New York City’s [Washington Square Park](http://www.chessnyc.com/places-to-play-chess-in-nyc.html) is a popular site for pickup chess games where [Bobby Fischer](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bobby_Fischer#cite_note-46), the American chess prodigy on whom Freddie is based, played with his coach and sometimes second [William Lombardy](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Lombardy#Coaching_Bobby_Fischer). The legendary [Village Chess Shop](http://vanishingnewyork.blogspot.com/2012/11/village-chess-shop.html), just a couple of blocks away, closed in 2012 after 40 years of operation. 
> 
> [Leonid Viigand](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chess_\(musical\)#Plot_summary) was Anatoly’s Act II competitor in the original West End version of Chess, whom Freddie helps him beat. 
> 
> Pierre Bezukhov is in fact a central character in Leo Tolstoy’s War and Peace, played by [Josh Groban](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Josh_Groban#Performances) in the stage adaptation of [Natasha, Pierre and the Great Comet of 1812](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natasha,_Pierre_%26_The_Great_Comet_of_1812).
> 
> Title is from the _Begin Again_ song “[Lost Stars](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sLTRSakuugs),” performed by Keira Knightley. Summary is, of course, inspired by “[Nobody’s Side](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E26urLysvuk)” and “[Mountain Duet](https://youtu.be/39qTvBlk1B4).”


End file.
